AMD’s launch is backed by its old ally, Hewlett-Packard, as well as Alienware in the United States. In Euorpe, Acer will supply X2 systems, and Asia’s Lenovo Group will do the same.

A “vast set of usual suspects” among the OEM and system-builder base will also design systems around the chip later this year, according to Jonathan Seckler, AMD’s AMD64 brand manager.

AMD’s attentions will now shift to marketing the new chip, through its tried-and-true evangelism campaign as well as more technical discussions. From a design standpoint, the current version of the X2 outstrips the Intel Pentium D by a significant margin in most benchmarks. In part, the performance improvement is believed to be due to the fact that Intel funnels its memory requests through a single unified front-side bus, which AMD calls a bottleneck.

However, AMD’s own production is itself bottlenecked through a single manufacturing facility. One analyst has gone on record stating that AMD’s dual-core manufacturing plans aren’t truly viable, given its production limitations. Intel has also priced the Pentium D at a significant discount to the X2.

That position was sharply rebutted by Seckler, who told ExtremeTech that “everything is moving forward as planned.” AMD began shipping the X2 to OEMs on Friday, and individual chips should begin shipping to retailers on Monday for DIY system builders, Seckler said.

“We’re very, very pleased with our forecasts in terms of demand,” Seckler said. “In manufacturing, to date we’ve had good supply both in channels and in OEMs.”

Specifically, Seckler claimed that the X2 is yielding better than the first Athlon 64s. AMD’s manufacturing engineers have reported double-digit improvements in overall chip yield on a year-over year basis, measured each year for the last two years, he said. Yields, the percentage of functional processor dies that can be separated and finished off into chips, have been helped both by AMD’s completed shift to 90 nanometers as well as the X2’s design, based on its current Athlon 64 chip. Backing the X2’s clock speeds down to 2.4-GHz to meet its thermal design goals, Seckler said, helped the yields further.

AMD has also adequately planned for any demand spikes, Seckler added. “All those kinds of things are in the demand forecast plan,” he said. “If we do come out with something, you can rest assured that we can manufacture that.”

Nevertheless, AMD’s cheapest X2 is above $500; its most expensive just above $1,000. So will AMD attract a more mainstream user with a low-end part? Seckler demurred, saying only that a chip at the $300 price point was “something we’re evaluating”. AMD does not want to detract from either its single-core Athlon 64 or Athlon 64 FX chips, Seckler said.

“The Athlon 64 X2 is going to market today,” Seckler said, adding a bit of bombast. “To be really blunt, it does not have any competition that you can think about. There is a Pentium D out there; yes, there are two somethings in it. But from a design standpoint, a manufacturing standpoint, and a value proposition standpoint, I don’t think you can equate the two products together.”

Because the X2 is a drop-in replacement to its current single-core parts, upgrades are expected to be perfomed smoothly. User motherboards will require a BIOS upgrade, however, and AMD said Monday that it had partnered with numerous board makers, including ABIT, AOpen, Asustek, Biostar Group, Chaintech, DFI, Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), Epox, FIC, Foxconn, Gigabyte, Iwill, MSI, Quanta, Sapphire, Shuttle, Soltek, Supermicro, and Tyan, and others.

Not surprisingly, AMD plans to build a marketing campaign around the new chip. Another “tech tour” is planned, a straight-to-the-user roadshow that AMD used to promote the Athlon 64. AMD also plans to tout the tight relationships it has with content creation and production houses such as Lucasfilm, Seckler said.

“We are the Avis of processor companies,” Seckler said. “We’re number 2, and we try harder.”